Keith Crain

03/03/15
This year, when it came to top honors for those who made headlines, it was important to recognize Kevyn Orr and now-retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes, both of whom were part of the team responsible for managing the Detroit bankruptcy.

02/22/15
I am very pleased and proud to know that two leaders of our government, Gov. Rick Snyder and Mayor Mike Duggan, with apologies to both, would not win a beauty contest or be in the running for the anchor seat of NBC's nightly news.

01/26/15
Our new Wayne County Executive, Warren Evans, seems to be making all the right moves. Reducing head count, lowering salaries — these are all steps in the right direction. But there is one looming decision that has to be made. And the sooner, the better. Something has to be done about the unfinished jail site on Gratiot Avenue. It is an eyesore and certainly is contributing to the blight of our city in a very visible spot. I am told that the county has somewhere around $150 million already spent on this colossal disaster. Luckily, Evans doesn't have to shoulder any of the responsibility for this fiasco. But someone has to take a hard look at where all this money was wasted.

01/22/15
The North American International Auto Show at Cobo is the best in North America and one of the best in the world. If you haven't seen what a few hundred million dollars has done to Cobo, you will be in for a very pleasant surprise. I hope everybody gets a chance in the next week to enjoy this spectacular motor show. It's worth the time and the money.

01/18/15
General Motors CEO Mary Barra said she was surprised by the wave of media attention that followed her appointment as the first female CEO of a major global automaker about a year ago, saying that it reflects a backward view of the automotive industry.

01/11/15
It doesn't seem over a quarter of a century ago that Detroit had a sleepy auto show that was nice but didn't do much for anyone. Now it is the reigning North American International Auto Show and has been for all these 26 years. Next week, Detroit will be center stage for thousands of journalists from around the world, well over 5,000 strong. There is a good chance that we'll be able to skip the snow and let them see the best part of Detroit. Hopefully, they will be able to see noticeable improvement in our city from year to year.

01/07/15
Last year was a time for getting everything together in Detroit: A new mayor, a new City Council, a bankruptcy that needed to be ended. And a economic recovery that was slow to touch the city. The mayor and City Council now have a year under their belts. We have seen some remarkable achievements by Mayor Mike Duggan. And now, most significantly, the bankruptcy is over and the emergency manager is gone. We still have a financial overview in place for quite a while, but the city is basically on its own.

12/22/14
I never worked for Bill Bonds, but there was a time when he interviewed me regularly. I have never seen a better television reporter than Bill Bonds. Only J.P. McCarthy of WJR radio was in the same league. Together, we, in Detroit, had two great reporters. Today, all too often, reporters talk to you about a subject and they have three or four questions. That’s it. They ask the questions and they say thanks and that’s the end of the interview. Bill Bonds listened. He carried on a conversation with you and kept asking questions until he was satisfied that he got the last bit of information that his viewers would want.

12/14/14
Perhaps a statue or a bust would be more fitting. Kevyn Orr deserves this community's deepest appreciation. Make no mistake, you can name lots of people who deserve to get their own statue or key, starting with our governor, but the center of attention for a year and a half has been our emergency manager. He took our city into bankruptcy. But more importantly, he brought Detroit out of bankruptcy. He was the lightning rod for anything and everything that had to do with Detroit for quite a while. And now that it's all over, Detroit is ready to tackle the next very challenging chapter in its history. Orr deserves a key to our city.

12/08/14
Last week, Detroit once again made national headlines in newspaper and television reports when the lights went out. The power didn't go out everywhere -- but it went out in enough places to get everyone's attention. Just what our city needs. More publicity about chaos. No one bothered to read past the first few paragraphs to discover that this problem was caused by the city-owned power department, not DTE. Power was lost all over the downtown area where the city's old and obsolete power company was supplying power. City-owned buildings, plus sites like the DMC and the DIA, went black along with lots of traffic lights. Far too many people were stuck in elevators in buildings that lost power.

12/01/14
I guess we can call it "Black Thanksgiving." It used to be "Black Friday" — the day when retailers saw big profits. But now it's at least a day earlier, on the actual holiday itself. Forgive me if I sound a little like Scrooge, but I remember when there was a certain sobriety to the Christmas season.

11/24/14
Public Sector Consultants, an outfit in Lansing, has done a study that seems to conclude that our power generating system is becoming obsolete faster than we're replacing it. I can't help but think that our legislators and regulators are making it unnecessarily hard for power companies and others to create new ways to generate energy.

11/19/14
The Detroit bankruptcy process is almost over — and things will not be back to normal. But they will be without the bankruptcy. We'll still have some sort of oversight, which is a good thing. But now, I would suggest, the heavy lifting begins.

11/11/14
The journey to the end of bankruptcy has been long and painful. There has been a lot of giving with little or no taking, and now it would appear that we're at the end of that particular road. But it's not the end; it's just the beginning. While the end of the bankruptcy case leaves the city with a clean balance sheet, now the real work begins in trying to make sure everything is in place for the right financial conduct for the decades ahead.

11/04/14
Millions — no, billions — of dollars have been spent in the United States in the past few weeks to get you to vote for political candidates. Local money, state money and national money have been poured into the races in an effort to persuade you to vote for whomever.

10/28/14
Terri Lynn Land is the most qualified to be the next senator from Michigan. Her experience as Michigan Secretary of State demonstrated to the entire Michigan population that her business attributes were well-suited for the U.S. Senate. Her opponent simply doesn't have the business experience to best represent the state in Washington.

10/20/14
Right now, the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department are studying whether or not to let Comcast purchase a rival cable operator, Time Warner Cable. In order to gain federal approval, Comcast created a side deal to turn over nearly all Michigan customers to a new company managed by Charter Communications. We, the Michigan customers, may or may not see an improvement in our cable service. It's nothing but a way to get Comcast's customer count below 30 percent market share nationwide -- low enough to satisfy the feds and allow this merger. I can't help but wonder what Judge Harold Greene would think.

10/13/14
Last week, a committee of the Wayne County Commission voted to eliminate from consideration a plan to house the Wayne County Jail in a former state prison on Mound Road. That opens the door for the very misguided idea of restarting the financial debacle on Gratiot Avenue that has already cost taxpayers $157 million and is far from finished. This entire jail project is a fiasco.

10/07/14
When you consider the amount of transactions that you do every day using some sort of device, it is amazing that there is not more hacking and fraud. Throw in your cellphone usage and the Internet, the amount of data we are leaving scattered about the world becomes staggering.

10/01/14
We have to turn our attention to two major architectural eyesores in Detroit that need the entire community's action to get rid of or fixed up: the Michigan Central Depot railroad station and the half-built or less Wayne County Jail.

09/23/14
Last week, Detroit celebrated the first Detroit Homecoming, an event that Crain's was instrumental in organizing and running. It was a wonderful event and, I am pleased to say, a great success.

09/24/14
If anyone thought that the process of bankruptcy would be easy and quick, they were in for a rude awakening. The big news was the new water authority agreement, with suburbs and the city to share costs and operating oversight. It's a groundbreaking agreement, one that most folks didn't think was going to happen. There are still plenty of hoops to jump through before we can all breathe a sigh of relief and raise our glasses to congratulate ourselves for a job well done.

09/10/14
In just a few days, Detroit will begin its homecoming celebration. About 150 folks who moved away and have become successful in a variety of fields will return to Detroit to see just what's been going on since they left.